"Is the choir still going strong?" For the Pittsburgh Camerata, the answer is a resounding yes.

For the small-church-choirmaster in Dorothy Sayers' final Lord Peter Wimsey novel, "Busman's Honeymoon," the response is a bit more guarded: "The 'Halleluiah Chorus' exposed our weaknesses." Sayers' work inspired Camerata artistic director Rebecca Rollett to create Camerata performances pairing the ensemble's repertoire with musically relevant literary texts -- texts that make reference (both subtle and direct) to works within the Camerata's stylistically diverse repertoire.

Friday night's performance in the Mt. Lebanon United Lutheran Church showed Rollett's vision to be sound, and gave the audience a compelling entry point into each musical set.

Karla Boos, Quantum Theatre's founder and artistic director, narrated the selected texts, inflecting her voice to bring out each work's various characters. The Camerata then followed Boos' introductions with portrayals of the literary scenes. This performance structure made compelling and clear transitions from one musical style to another.

Soprano Hannah Baker realized Jane Austen's commentary on 19th-century "accomplished women" with her well-paced "Queen Mary's Lamentation." Baker's tone was crystal clear and her sparingly placed vibrato was tight and focused. Boos' reading from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" set up the parlor-like atmosphere of Baker's solo and the excellent trio performance of "How Sweet in the Woodlands" by Jane Potter Baumer, Yvonne Sterrett and Georgeanna Williams.

Following the reading of the opening of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," baritone Matthew Derby portrayed Icabod Crane's nasally loud singing voice as the Camerata was transformed into the boisterous congregation of a fictional Sleepy Hollow church.

Organist Anthony Rollett supported the ensemble's lush sound in Vaughn-Williams' evocative "The Lord Is My Shepherd." The choir entered skillfully with the phrase "his song was this ..." from Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress." The passages requiring tenor falsettos were especially clear.

The antiphonal arrangement of the voices for Allegri's "Miserere Mei" brought Boos' narration of the cathedral scene in Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady" to life.

The choir exhibited excellent breath control in its realizations of the extended phrases in Finnish composer Juhani Komulainen's "O Weary Night." The unique harmonic progressions in this composition are a challenge to portray successfully. However, the work's language was easily followed because the ensemble maintained a strong grasp of Komulainen's tonal center.

The a cappella highlight of the concert was the performance of "Shenandoah." The Camerata captured the harmonic poignancy of James Erb's arrangement of the folk tune and its portrayal of Erb's imitative textures was evocative of echoes reverberating across water.